32 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



3. Your Committee further recommend that the Rumford Committee 

 be instructed to use all pi'oper means to make the Rumford Fund con- 

 stantly active and useful, so as to carry out the donor's intention in the 

 manner defined by the decree of the Supreme Court in 1832, not only 

 by recognizing just claims to the Rumford medals, but also by insti- 

 tuting or encouraging investigations and experiments, which may lead 

 to discoveries or improvements worthy of the Rumford Premium. 



4. As one method of effectively promoting the foregoing objects, 

 your Committee would recommend the occasional offering of a premium 

 for the solving of important specific questions concerning the properties 

 or uses of light and heat. Questions or problems of this kind from 

 time to time arise, of much scientific and practical consequence, the 

 settlement of which may probably be expedited by the opportune 

 direction of attention to them by the Academy ; and to those who 

 best solve such problems the medal may perhaps not unfrequently be 

 given. 



5. Your Committee recommend that such books or publications as 

 the Academy possess, or may hereafter acquire, by means of the income 

 of the Rumford Fund, should be so marked or ticketed as permanently 

 to indicate the fact that they were so acquired. 



Should the Academy adopt the foregoing propositions, a few altera- 

 tions of its laws will be necessary to give them effect. A draught of 

 the alterations proposed is appended to this Report. 



Another subject referred to this Committee was the expediency of 

 republishing the complete works of Count Rumford at the expense of 

 the Academy. The Committee have inquired of a bookselling house 

 the pi'obable expense of an edition of five hundred copies of the three 

 volumes of Count Rumford's works now in the Academy's library, and 

 find that it would be about $ 1,800. Although they would desire to 

 pay any practicable mark of respect to the memory of Count Rumford, 

 both for his services to science and his relations to this Academy, yet 

 they feel obliged to report that it is inexpedient for the Academy, in 

 the present state of its funds, to incur so considerable an expense. 



Jacob Bigelow, 

 TiiEOPHiLus Parsons, 

 J. A. Lowell, 

 Asa Gray, 

 Geo. B. Emerson. 



